Recently I was asked my a member of my local scrapbooking group, how I scan my 12 x 12 scrapbooking pages? Did I infact have a large flatbed scanner?
Well - the short answer is no . . . I don't have a large scanner that accomodates 12 x 12 pages. What I do (and what many others do too) is scan two sides of my scrapbooking page as separate images and then I 'stitch' the two halves together!
Since this has been asked of me a few times recently, I decided that it might be useful to include this article here on my blog. I use PhotoStudio 2000 for my scanning and 'stitching' (yep, it's an oldie but I think a goodie). Even if you don't have the same digital program on your computer, you might be able to work out how to adapt these instructions to your own program none-the-less.
So - how do we do it I hear you ask?
Firstly, I open PhotoStudio 2000. When I scan my scrapbooking pages, I always scan at 150dpi and at 25%, I'm only making a digital copy of my page usually for the purposes of sharing in emails, on my blog or in scrapbooking galleries, so scanning at a higher dpi or percentage isn't really necessary. Once both sides of the image have been scanned, you can close the scanning dialogue box and you should have something similar to my screenshot below. At this point ALWAYS make sure that the scanned left hand side of the image is sitting on top of the scanned right hand side, otherwise your stitched image will be back to front.
Anyway - back to the stitching. If you look along the picture toolbar along the top, we need to click on the 'stitch' button which is the 3rd button from the right. This will bring up a new dialogue box and a screen shot similar to this.
I usually find setting the 'Blend' to 100 works for most 'stitching' applications but this is something you can play around with if you aren't happy with the stitched results you get. The next step is to zoom in on both image halves to find 2 common areas ie. a corner of a photo, a brad, tip of an alphabet letter, etc.
Next, zoom in even closer to then identify the single pixels that make up that particular area and select a common pixel in each image and click your mouse it. You should find the pixel becomes highlighted with a circle with a '+' sign in the middle. This is going to be the point at which the two images are joined.
Click OK and you should now be presented with a stitched version of your two separately scanned images as depicted below.
Now it's time to resize your image. I always make sure the width of my scanned 12 x 12 pages is 400 pixels. Click on 'EDIT' then 'IMAGE SIZE'.
In the box that pops up, now enter 400 pixels for the image width. Don't worry about putting in a height measurement because the program will automatically make the necessary adjustments to maintain the proportions of the original image. Click OK.
Now that your image is re-sized, you can save it to your system. Click on 'FILE' then 'SAVEAS' and save the stitched image as a JPEG file.
Once successfully saved, you can safely close the 2 separate scanned image halves without needing to save them (unless of course you have reason for doing so).
Viola! One 12 x 12 scrapbooking page that was scanned in two halves and then stitched back together using digital software.
NOTE: Depending on the amount of embellishing on your pages, some areas may not scan well, particularly if they are really what we call 'lumpy bumpy' BUT if you aren't happy with your results, try scanning again to see if you get different results the second time around. If you are still not happy with the results, then this might just be the page that will work better if you photograph it!
Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, you won't all necessarily have PhotoStudio 2000 at your disposal to follow my step-by-step instructions - hopefully though, it will give you some idea how the 'stitching' process works and you'll be able to adapt it to a digital program you do have and you'll be 'stitching your own pages in no time flat!
Enjoy!
